SHEARING SHEEP.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 447, 19 November 1875, Page 4

SHEARING SHEEP.

The Hampden Guardian (Victoria) thinks •* the attention of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might, with some good result, be directed to the cause of the poor sheep which are just now about to undergo their annual course of torture. As a rule, the process of shearing, unless carefully and skilfully carried out, is by no means a pleasant one for the animal operated on, and owing to the extreme competition amongst men and the desire to get through the largest number in the shortest time, the sheep often loses more than its wool under the operation of the shears. But there is yet another, and so far as we can learn, a far more cruel and painful ordeal that this patient animal has to undergo in order that its wool may be ‘ got up ’ in a white and bright condition for the London market. We refer to the system of spout washing, by means of which every animal passed through the wash pool is placed and held, for a longer or shorter period, under spouts of water often falling with considerable volume, and from a great height. It is known to most flockmasters that the effects upon the bodies of sheep washed under the ‘spouts’ is very severe indeed, and sheep killed, eveq some weeks after such dressing, have been found, when skinned, to be perfectly black in the flesh. So far are sheepowners aware, apparently, of the injurious effects of the * spouts,’ that they do not now risk their most valuable and high-priced sheep under such a process, but prefer to shear all such high-class wool in the grease. Washing and shearing are, of course, very necessary operations, but it is not absolutely necessary that they should be carried out with such a regard to economy and despatch as to ignore altogether the obligations of humanity. It is by no means necessary that a sheep should be tortured in order that its fleece may be removed in a clean condition for market, and where the profits of sheep farming are so very enormous, a little, we think, might be spared to secure immunity from needless pain to the patient animal that increases the wealth.”